


Not Alone

by helsinkibaby



Category: CSI
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-31
Updated: 2003-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:05:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you need to crash, then crash and burn, you're not alone</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Alone

He didn't expect to find her here.

Not her specifically; he hadn't expected to find anyone here. He'd thought that this as his secret ritual, had never dreamed that anyone else did it too, least of all her.

He shouldn't have been that surprised though, he reminded himself. After all she was a Californian too.

She was sitting on the ledge of the roof, body turned to the side, looking across at the rising sun. It was only a little way over the horizon, so Greg couldn't see her profile clearly. What little he could see looked thoughtful, pensive even, and he almost hated to interrupt her.

Almost.

He took a couple of steps towards her, the roof dust swishing under his feet. Her head tilted slightly at the sound, but she didn't look at him, just raised her cigarette to her lips, taking a long pull from it. A cloud of smoke further occluded her from his vision, and he took the opportunity to wipe the pensive expression from his own face, pasting his customary cheery smile there instead.

"Fancy meeting you here," was his greeting of choice, light enough to be innocuous, heavy enough to be an invitation to talk.

She squinted up at him at that, her lips curling in a smile that could only be described as bitter, and was nothing like the gap-toothed beam that had been known to stop his heart. "You come here often?" she deadpanned, making him chuckle.

"You're stealing my lines" he told her, sitting down opposite her, blocking her face from the ever-increasing glare of the sun. He couldn't see the sunrise now, which rather defeated the purpose of coming up here, but he didn't mind all that much. He'd rather look at her any day.

"Sorry." But she didn't sound it, didn't sound much of anything in fact. "What brings you up here?"

In answer, he twisted around, observing for a moment the sun's progress. "That" he said simply, and he studiously didn't look around to see her face, didn't want to see whatever surprise or suspicion might be there. Because he was supposed to be Greg Sanders, lab tech extraordinaire, who never let anything get him down. He was supposed to stay in the lab, doing his experiments, insulated and neutral. Not involved. No-one ever realised how depressing it could be to prove conclusively that yes, this man had raped this woman and had done it before, that yes, these twelve men were see beating a taxi driver to death, but we can only tie six to it forensically. He loved his job, loved chasing down proof of guilt, but that didn't mean that there weren't times when his ick factor went into overdrive. Those were usually the times when he escaped up here, letting the majesty of the sunrise calm his racing heart, still his shaking hands.

It just hadn't been working too well lately.

Aware suddenly that he'd been silent for too long, he forced a smile to his face, turning back to her. "I mean," he continued with a shrug, "It's no California sunrise. But it'll do." There was a pause then as he waited for her to speak, and when she didn't, he prompted her with, "You?"

In answer, she held up her right hand, the one holding the cigarette. "I can't smoke in the building," she explained, and she looked surprised at the lack of surprise on his face. "You're not going to ask me when I started smoking again?"

She looked even more surprised at his next answer. "No."

He didn't have to ask, because he already knew.

It had been around the same time that the sunrise had begun failing to do its job, when his hands began shaking all the time. When they'd ended up lying on the floor, their eyes meeting briefly before he passed out, and the only thing that registered through the pain was the look of horror in her eyes. When he'd crashed through a window, when she'd been pushed to the floor, when their second home burned around them as glass rained down and chaos roared.

He didn't blame her for smoking again. In her shoes, he would have done the same.

She must have seen the knowledge in his face because she nodded, taking another hit of her cigarette. "It's been a hell of a week," she murmured, and a harsh laugh escaped him at the understatement. The lab blowing up, Catherine's suspension, his hospitalisation, and now Lockwood.

"You can say that again," he replied, and the very faintest of smiles touched her lips.

"I haven't been sleeping," she told him, and he narrowed his eyes, not understanding at first. "I know that's nothing new," she added quickly. "But this is different. I mean, I can get by on a few hours... but this...every time I close my eyes, I see the explosion... I hear the glass breaking..."

He was seeing it just listening to her, forcing himself back to reality when her voice broke and she looked down, attempting to hide it by lifting her cigarette to her lips again. "I can buy that" he heard himself saying. "The hospital drugs worked wonders... but now..."

"You shouldn't be back in work yet," she told him, not the first time he'd heard that. It just sounded odd coming from such an avowed workaholic.

"Pots and kettles," he reminded her, and she had the grace to look abashed. "You know," he told her seriously. "If you ever can't sleep... and you need to talk to someone...you can call me."

She shook her head violently. "That's not fair on you," she began, leading him to copy her gesture, interrupting her.

"It's not just for you," he said, and she stopped, obviously stunned. "It's just... everyone else thinks that because they were there, because they heard it or saw it that they know what it was like and they think they understand, but they don't." He knew he was babbling, heard the faint tinge of desperation, if not incipient hysteria, in his voice, but he couldn't stop talking, any more than he could stop his hands shaking. "They've got no idea what it felt like...they don't know..."

She silenced him by reaching out her left hand, closing it over the top of his right. Her skin was warm and reassuring against his, but nowhere near as warm and reassuring as the look in her eyes. "I know," was all she said but it was all he needed to hear.

"I wanted to come back to work," he told her after a moment. "I just didn't think it would be like this." Because the lab had always been his domain, his safe haven, and he didn't know if it could ever be that again.

"It's going to get better Greg," she told him, and he smiled. Grissom had said the same thing to him, but it was easier to believe Sara with the sun lighting her face, in the open air without the smell of burning still lingering, with her hand still in his. "You're not alone you know."

He turned his hand over in her grasp, squeezing her fingers as their palms pressed together. "Neither are you," he reminded her, and the resultant smile was brighter than any sunrise.

She held his gaze for a moment before visibly shaking herself, stubbing out her cigarette on the stone ledge. "We should get back in," she said, showing all the signs of a woman on the move, but she didn't drop his hand.

"Good idea," he agreed, standing up with her. "I've got some stuff in the lab to finish up…" Except that officially, his shift was over, and the work could, and would, wait until the start of the next one.

He just didn't want to go home.

"Yeah," she said, her voice no more enthused than his. "I've got some paperwork needs doing…" But her shift was over too, and paperwork would definitely wait; in fact, were Grissom here to hear that, he'd more than likely order her home. Nick would rip the papers out of her hand.

He'd do neither, because he knew that she no more wanted to go home than he did.

An idea struck him suddenly, and he was about to say something to her when she looked over his shoulder, and her face suddenly filled with dismay. "You missed your sunrise."

He looked around to see that she was right, the sun now high over the horizon. "It's ok," he told her, turning back to her with a jaunty shrug, nowhere near as forced as his last effort. "There'll be another one tomorrow."

It took a second, but when his words registered, a smile spread across her face, and not the forced one that she'd been flashing around the CSI lab in an effort to make people think that she was fine. This was the real deal, a full-blown Sara Sidle grin, and as it always did, Greg's heart skipped a beat at the sight.

The fact that he, however inadvertently, made her smile made him brave, made him give voice to his though of seconds earlier. "Hey, you want to get breakfast… someplace? Together?"

Her smile didn't falter. "That'd be nice," she said, nodding firmly. "The usual place in what… fifteen minutes?"

Greg smiled, gesturing with one hand towards the door leading back to the building in an "After you" gesture. "I shall see you there," he said, walking her to the door and down the stairs. They didn't meet anyone on their way to the locker room, nor did they linger there, going straight out to the parking lot, splitting up when they hit the open air, going to their respective cars.

It was only when he went to put the key in the ignition that Greg noticed it, and when he did, he smiled.

His hands had stopped shaking.


End file.
